Former Yankee batboy, Bill "Hondo" Hongach, who had his first book published while still in high school at age 18, takes the reader on a journey of what goes on behind the scenes of America's National Pastime. The book opens with the author being beaten so badly by Pete Rose's right-hand man, ironically, with a Pete Rose bat, that he ends up in a coma for four days. Jack Lang, who was in charge of the Baseball Writers Assoc. and wrote dozens of baseball books himself before being put into the Hall of Fame, wrote that this was the best baseball book he ever read He simply put it ..".I could not put it down until I had finished reading the entire book." For one to see and know the "The Dark Sides of Baseball" is, in essence, to have the perspective that very few baseball fans get to experience. To become close on a personal basis with some of the greats of the game is rare and unique. "The Dark Sides of Baseball" is a glimpse that the public is not privy to or ever get to encounter. The book tells a tale of how a teenage boy chased his love of baseball, from interviewing sports greats, becoming a Yankee batboy the last two years at the original Yankee Stadium in 1972 & 1973, at the age of 18 having his first baseball book published while still a batboy and leading to the end of the Topps' Baseball Card monopoly, while still going to school. His close relationship with Mickey Mantle and Pete Rose would show him the troubled and positive sides of the game, that the public were never shown. The stories are endless as to what goes on in a clubhouse and what it is like to have these great athletes together for a baseball card show. Every baseball fan can watch a game and look up the stats. "The Dark Sides of Baseball" lets you see what goes on in the dugout, the clubhouse and off the field.